Marines Scrap 'Robot Mule'

Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

December 31, 2015

(NEWSER)– It obeys voice commands and can carry 400 pounds of equipment over rugged terrain for 24 hours—but it sounds like a lawn mower, and US Marines worried that it could get them killed. The Marine Corps has shelved the Legged Squad Support System "robotic mule" developed by Google's Boston Dynamics and the Pentagon's DARPA research arm because its gas-powered engine was just too noisy, reports the BBC.

"As Marines were using it, there was the challenge of seeing the potential possibility because of the limitations of the robot itself," Kyle Olson, a spokesman for the Marines' Warfighting Lab, tells Military.com. "They took it as it was: a loud robot that's going to give away their position."